Two days earlier:
Amrydor decided to take full advantage of being a guest in favored standing with the nexus, who was allowed to use the warrens; he was going to entirely skip normal delving schedules and protocols, which should work out best for everyone, anyway.
One of the most important things from his point of view was to keep himself too busy to think about how soon Geti would be here, though there were a few things he had been wanting to take care of anyway.
He was also a little embarrassed that Fuyuko had noticed he was feeling nervous, but she'd been nice enough to not actually laugh at him.
There were other complicated feelings there as well, but as he'd told Fuyuko before, he wasn't going to stop living his life. If sothing did change on her end in the future, they'd deal with it then. But right now, he was going to continue living with the assumption that things would remain the sa.
His first stop was one of the orchards tucked away in the warrens to pick a large selection of fresh fruit to stow away for snacks later, followed by using one of the shortcuts to get down to the main kitchens, which provided him with bread, cheese, and preserved at. Not all of the fruit or the kitchen provided staples made their way into his pack, of course; he always had room for a little more to eat.
There was going to be food available once he was properly delving anyway, but Amrydor rarely felt truly full, so having more snacks and als was always nice.
At one ti, he thought his appetite was mostly because of his traces of giant heritage, but he was beginning to have doubts on that matter. Fuyuko had similar heritage through her oni bloodlines, and even more reason for her appetite from her lycan heritage and shape-changing abilities. If his appetite was from his traces of giant ancestry alone, he shouldn't be able to match Fuyuko's hunger.
This led to the question of what his appetite was truly feeding, and he had no good answers yet.
Once Amrydor had his rations secured, he traveled to the library zone's non-combat path to begin so research. He was not delving yet, so had no challenges in front of him, but at the sa ti was not earning any value toward nexus rewards, and there was sothing specific he wanted to get before they left to go train with the Azeria clan.
That was one of the few downsides of his bond with Fuyuko, as normal guests at least earned a trickle from the mana that they fed the nexus just by being there. He only earned that trickle when at least moderately exerting himself, which still put him behind where others would be.
There were two particular things bothering Amrydor that his research would hopefully help with. The more general one was the realization that while he had been walking a dependable path, he had done very little toward truly forging his own abilities. Before coming to Azeria, the only things that were specifically his had been his special sense, and his battle aura having a strong death affinity.
Even his recently acquired technique felt to not be entirely his yet; the ability to shift where his blade was striking away from the physical blade itself felt like sothing built from his mark and his connection with the nexus. Amrydor was certain that he could build on it to make it more completely his own, but he felt that he had a fair way to go on that.
His more specific concern was mostly about his special sense; Amrydor had always thought of his life and death sense to be purely related to his death affinity, in large part because he could tell the difference between sothing that had died and sothing that had never lived.
What called this assumption into question was the wide variety of life in Azeria. Elents and divine agents were rare, but there were enough of them here for him to have started analyzing the ways in which they were different when he 'looked' at them, and the ways they were the sa.
Elentals were definitely alive, but their patterns looked nothing like biological life patterns. They sort of looked similar to living spirits, but much more rooted in physical reality, and in addition to their spiritual energy, they were sort of made up from the essence of their elent.
In contrast, a spirit of a given elent readily interacted with and commanded that elent, but was composed entirely of spiritual energy.
The various forms of divine agents were... sothing else. His studies at the temple had taught that these beings were generally evolved forms of mortal souls, a growth that happened slowly after they transitioned into their deity's realm. Everything he had seen was entirely compatible with that knowledge, but also made his education in the matter feel extrely insufficient to describe them.
There was overlap between the strongest mortals and the weakest divine agents, but the divine agents stood out to him anyway. It was like their true spiritual selves were projecting a three-dinsional 'shell' of biological life into physical reality, and that was only the beginning.
However, he couldn't describe most of the weirdness; he could recognize that it was there, and catch occasional glimpses of sothing truly different, but it was like he couldn't actually 'see' it because he couldn't comprehend it well enough.
At least there was one thing he'd been able to figure out. After a person's body died, their soul still counted as alive to his senses, though clearly marked by having had its physical body die. This was sothing that had begun concerning him a few years ago, when he realized that he'd never seen a soul with his senses.
Now he was certain that the souls of the freshly dead were obscured sohow.
Overall, this gave him a new starting point, because if his affinity was truly only death, then the amount of specific variations he could sense about life made no sense. But a life affinity wouldn't create a death aura, nor should it be able to differentiate between once-alive objects and never-alive objects.
So he must have both affinities, and he had no idea how that was possible. This was going to be the focal point of his studies.
Amrydor spent the entire rest of the day and well into the evening compiling everything he could about the nature of life and death, whether philosophical, religious, or magical in nature, with occasional breaks to duck into the cafe and eat. He certainly wasn't going to risk getting Horace upset by sneaking a snack while near the books! He just needed to make sure to tell one of the various librarians that he was still using the materials on his table before he went to the cafe.
Most of of the information he gathered seed useless for his purposes, but he took notes on everything, just in case. Even if it did not provide knowledge now, it might provide perspective later.
In the end, from everything he had learned that day, there was only one thing Amrydor was certain of. Sohow, his affinities tied, directly or indirectly, to Lady Kikoi Muerte; the goddess of the transition between life and death, and wife of Lord Yamaraja, the judge of the dead.
That transition included from death into life, in the case of those reincarnated. She was the only deity he could find that was directly tied to both life and death.
And beyond that, the divine agents of both of those gods were the banshees, such as Lady Cliodhna, who had already said that she sohow knew him. But she'd also said he was not a reincarnated soul.
Now that Amrydor was certain that his powers were connected to Kikoi Muerte, he had many questions about that connection, and no answers. The most probable seeming link was the banshees themselves, but there was a flaw in that idea. Much like how a celestial fox was both a fox-spirit and a divine agent, banshees were both fey creatures and divine agents.
If he was sohow descended from one of them, he should have also inherited so aspect of their fey nature. Even if that aspect was much weaker in him for so reason, given the environnt he was in, sothing fey should have shown itself by now.
The idea of asking Lady Cliodhna directly was rather terrifying, especially given that she'd already said that she had no intention of telling him more until he was judged ready. So his next best option was to find a priest or priestess of Kikoi Muerte when he returned to the capital.
Once he had compiled his notes and placed his borrowed books in one of the proper to-be-returned areas, Amrydor made his way to the normal entrance for this part of the zone; he was now ready to begin his delve. It was late at night, but he was more than capable of pushing through, and this ti of night had the important feature of having no delving parties scheduled, giving him the luxury of doing the delve solo without interfering with other delvers.
The five challenges that he faced did not seem customized or overly difficult, so he was fairly certain that the cores were not paying specific attention to his delve. He rather appreciated that — it gave him a sense of privacy, and he felt no need to be given extra challenges at the mont.
No specific rewards were crafted for him when he finally reached the end of his challenges a couple of hours later, per previous arrangent. All things considered, Amrydor would rather accumulate owed value for now, and then make one or two specific requests. This was sothing that Fuyuko's parents had agreed to weeks ago, when his now more limited rate of rewards was discussed.
In the rest area for the next zone, the mushroom forest, people were already beginning to stir to get ready for their delves. Amrydor kept out of their way as he prepared a al for himself that included adding the available mushrooms to his supplies, and then found an available bed to take a well-needed rest in. Thankfully, being this tired ant that he fell to sleep quickly, rather than his mind having a chance to wander.
He awoke in the late afternoon and took his ti cleaning up and getting ready for his current 'day'. As the mushroom forest was much less linear than the previous zones, there were fewer restrictions on how the parties interacted with it. Having everyone rush out at the start of the day would be bad for everyone, but letting people trickle in over the course of the morning gave plenty of ti for everyone to find challenges and quests in the village built of mushroom houses, and then disperse throughout the vast fungal forest zone to fulfill those quests.
Three of the five challenges he faced had been fairly standard for the zone: find a 'timid runaway pet' and gently retrieve it from whatever difficult location it had hidden itself, scour the sub-caverns for a rare crystal formation, and provide so manual labor to assist in the village's manufacturing.
The 'pet' in question was new to him, and certainly not the work of Lady Kazue. Probably not Lady Moriko's work either. Lord Mordecai seed the most likely culprit for Amrydor's plight of needing to retrieve a three foot long tarantula-crab with a scorpion's tail. The toxin was only painful, according to the 'owner', but even so Amrydor didn't really want to experience that.
After his third attempt to gently corral the creature into a space where Amrydor could get a net over it, he sighed in exasperation. "You know that I can literally see that you have a sapient mind, right? I know that you are being deliberately difficult."
The inhabitant did a little dance and spun in a circle while clacking its claws at him. The clacking sounded suspiciously like laughter. It had a mixed shelter of wide-capped mushrooms and overhangs in the cave wall to scuttle between, making it very difficult to get at without getting stung.
He had been intending to try getting the net directly over his target, but now Amrydor decided to go for sothing a little different. It wasn't quite as gentle, but it should be gentle enough. He quickly folded the net in half a few tis, creating a loose cloth 'shield' to hold in one hand, then dashed in before his target could figure out what his plan was.
When the creature lashed out to sting him, Amrydor swung the folded net to intercept and tangle the stinger, which gave him one point of control, then he used that to drag the spider-crap toward him and half-spin it at the sa ti, giving himself the chance to scoop underneath the creature and hoist it up against his chest.
With his target secured, Amrydor walked several feet away to put the thrashing spider-crab back on the ground and gently pin it in place, while still using the net to control the stinger. "Alright, either I can wrestle with you until I get this net unfolded enough to completely wrap around you, or you can acknowledge your defeat and we can walk back together."
After a mont, it slumped and then sighed with an odd clacking noise. "Fine, I yield. Spoilsport. I was gonna keep you running after for the next half hour, at least!"
Amrydor laughed and released the inhabitant and returned to the village to claim his token.
Neither the mineral hunt nor the labor had any unusual aspects to them, and he rather enjoyed the labor in this case. While he certainly was not a proper smith, his training had included the basics, along with basic craftsmanship in many other fields, and he was able to work the bellows evenly to maintain the right temperature, adjusting speed for when the bunkin smith wanted it hotter or cooler.
The action provided a focus for a light ditative state as well, and while in that contemplative state, Amrydor ca to realize that there was sothing about the process of fire burning its fuel that was akin to the patterns he saw in life. The fire was certainly not alive, but there was just a hint of sothing almost lifelike.
When he was done with that, Amrydor cleaned up and t with the first of his more unusual challenges. He didn't think these had been customized by the cores; rather, it seed that so of the inhabitants wanted to learn more about Amrydor's abilities and his recent research.
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